Attack of the Cybermen review ["Paula Moore"]

In 1986, the Cybermen were thwarted in their plan to restore Mondas to the solar system by the First Doctor. In 1985, the Sixth Doctor and Peri must stop time-travelling Cybermen from destroying the Earth and preventing their defeat.

What's in a Name?: The Cybermen never really attack at any point. They defend themselves against the Cryons, kill those who enter the sewers to preserve their secret and plan to use Halley's Comet to destroy Earth but they never really do any actual attacking. Perhaps it should have been called Convolution of the Cybermen.

When and Where: The Doctor and Peri land in Shoreditch, 1985. This isn't long after The Twin Dilemma, as the Doctor is still recovering from Jaconda, and is shortly before Vengeance on Varos. For the Cybermen, this is between The Tomb of the Cybermen and Scorpius. For Lytton, this is a year after Resurrection of the Daleks.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "A little gratitude wouldn't irretrievably damage my ego."
• "More bulges than an antenatal clinic."
• "That's bonkers." / "That's debatable. It's also the truth."
• "You said you came from Fulham!"
• "Lytton? Tall, lean, dark, well-spoken? The sort of man who might shoot his mother just to keep his trigger finger supple?"
• "Please remove your TARDIS from Telos before you need rescuing again."
• In The Twin Dilemma, we were introduced to a thoroughly unpleasant Doctor who suffered bouts of cowardice and paranoia-fuelled murderousness. Damage control has started quite soon with Colin Baker giving a performance that's harder than we'll meet in season 23 but that we can absolutely buy as the Doctor. He's a little prickly towards Peri at the beginning of the first part and isn't as accessible as a character as his predecessors, but he's infinitely more watchable. His scenes with Flast are some of the best of the story and show off the gentle side that we didn't get so much as a glimpse of in his debut appearance.
• If you were to ask a fan to select a John Nathan-Turner character to return for season 22, they'd say Aunt Vanessa, the Ergon or Lady Madge Cranleigh. Okay, maybe not, but Lytton probably wouldn't be one of them either. However, Maurice Colbourne is a talent that it would have been a shame not to see again. This is a character that, in the hands of a lesser actor, could easily be one-dimensional and unconvincing. Instead, he becomes one of the most memorable of the Sixth Doctor's guest stars.
  
• The Cryons might not be the best-realised monsters of all time, but they're a perfect foil for the Cybermen. Airy and sensual to counter the stolid Cybermen with soft feminine voices that contract with the Cybermen's deep and masculine ones. The actresses are handicapped by costumes that not only severely limit their vision but that stand in the way of a believable character with its odd design. They do a great job and help make the second episode easily the best of the two, although I understand that this is an unpopular opinion. Flast's death ends up being one of the most poignant moments of the story, refusing to tell the Cybermen anything and allowing herself to be pulled from the subzero temperature she required to live. Varne dies saving the Doctor and Rost tells him to leave the planet before more had to die for him. It's a topic that's brought up relatively often in New Who ("How many have died in your name?") but not so much pre-2005.
• Classic Doctor Who is almost always overlit. Look at the ship from Four to Doomsday or the sea base of Warriors of the Deep or, in fact, any set from any '80s story. The moodily-lit sewer is a rare example of lighting done right in this era, giving us a more sinister and eerie setting than we're used to with John Nathan-Turner's Doctors. Yes, it's an idea ripped straight from the script of The Invasion, but points for execution.
  

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "Next year? That's almost now!"
• "I don’t think I’ve ever misjudged anybody quite as badly as I did Lytton."
• One of the biggest problems with Attack of the Cybermen is the overwhelming and unprecedented amount of continuity, with a lot of the plot relying on elements of The Tenth Planet and The Tomb of the Cybermen. At the time, the public hadn't seen either of these stories since their transmission in the late '60s and almost certainly weren't in the minds of any but the Ian Levine's of the world. To lean so heavily on plot points from so long ago makes this story feel almost like fanfiction and makes it overly complicated and borderline inaccessible to the casual or to the newer viewer. The scene where the main characters are prisoners aboard the TARDIS is laden with exposition.
• The score for this story is truly abominable and easily among the very worst of the show. It's out of place, against the genre and sometimes downright intrusive. It almost brings the whole episode down as a result because it's difficult to take some of the scenes entirely seriously.
• Attack of the Cybermen gets a lot of flak for being too violent. It certainly has a very high body-count, but I don't necessarily object to that. What I do object to is the Doctor's off-screen battery of one of Lytton's constables in the sewer, which is inexcusable violence on the Doctor's behalf. Using a gun against a Cyberman when his own life, as well as the lives of Peri and absolutely everybody on Earth, are at risk is one thing but beating up a human being just isn't the Doctor. What makes it worse is how blasé he is about it afterwards.
  
• A Cyber-Controller, a Cyber-Leader and a Cyber-Lieutenant, each outranking one another... It feels too much and makes the Cybermen feel overly bureaucratic. These are cyborgs that surely shouldn't require so much devolution. Perhaps the Cyber-Lieutenant should have been excised. 
• It's not an issue confined to this story but the Cybermen have far too much personality and too many human mannerisms. They could get away with the mannerisms more in The Tenth Planet where there definitely felt like there was a biological element to them but in The Moonbase, The Tomb of the Cybermen and The Invasion they felt more mechanical. Here they are saying "excellent" and emoting and squabbling and it all feels so wrong. Without the cold calculation, they're just any old monster of the week. Also, the Cyber-Controller's a bit fat.
• Killing off important guest characters is absolutely fine and should even be encourage to raise the stakes and make the villains that much more dangerous and hateable. The problem with Bates and Stratton isn't that they're killed off but that their story, which began in the first episode, never went anywhere and had no resolution or real impact on the plot. Their plan to escape fails when the third accomplice dies and they don't manage to get the head of a Cyberman. They kill another and get one, then head to Cyber-Control with Stratton in a Cyberman suit. They die there. What was the point in this plot thread?
  
• The story ends on a very abrupt note. Cyber-Control blows up, the Doctor says he misjudges Lytton and then the episode ends. If it was going for a Doctor Who and the Silurians ending, it missed the mark with the Doctor's rumination failing to resonate nearly as well as the Third Doctor's reaction to the regrettable murder of the Silurian colony.
• Peri starts off this season in a truly horrific outfit. John Nathan-Turner was clearly doing it for the straight male audience, but having both of our leads in ridiculous costumes makes it very difficult to believe the story. They look their worst in episode one, when they're traversing the mundane streets of London.
• Flast sets fire to a Cyberman's arm and what does it do? It bats at the flames with his gun. What an idiot.

His Constant Companion: The two workmen and Payne are killed in the sewers. A Cyberman is shot by one of Lytton's gang; two are killed on Telos by the escapees; another is killed by the Doctor in the sewers using his sonic lance; and in the TARDIS, Russell shoots one in the head with his own gun and then kills another with a cyber gun. Russell is killed by a tap on the shoulder by a cyber fist. Varne and Rost shot a Cyberman to save Peri. Flast is exposed to temperatures of 15 degrees or above by the Cybermen. Bates, Stratton, Griffiths and Varne are shot. The Cyber-Controller is stabbed by Lytton before the Doctor shoots him and other Cybermen. Lytton dies in this fight. The remaining Cybermen are killed by the explosion of Cyber Control.

I'll Explain Later:

• The Doctor beat up one of Lytton's constables and then handcuffs the other without even trying to question him. Does the Doctor not care about what the constables were up to? Why not at least attempt asking them?
  
• Why are the Cybermen on Earth?
• Did Lytton and the Doctor even meet in Resurrection of the Daleks? Was there an untelevised adventure where they met again? And how would that make sense given that the Doctor describes Lytton as having been an agent of the Daleks the last time they had any interaction?
• If Lytton's transmission has been answered by the Cryons, why is it ongoing?
• The Cryons are on Telos at a point in time after The Tomb of the Cybermen, meaning they're in the 25th or 26th century. How, then, do Lytton and the Cryons communicate? How did they get his transmission?
• How did the Cybermen get into the TARDIS? It's always seemed to be self-locking and enemy-proof.
• Why do the Cybermen hesitate when the Doctor tells them to wait? They were given the order to shoot Peri so shouldn't they carry that out regardless of what her accomplice says?
• Wouldn't saving Mondas be a paradox? It would mean that Telos was never colonised by the Cybermen, meaning they couldn't have saved Mondas.
• Isn't the TARDIS in a state of temporal grace? How did Russell and the Cybermen shoot one another?
• Why do the tombs look nothing like they did in The Tomb of the Cybermen?
• How come the Cybermen are going rogue? What was that all about?
• Peri visited London with the Fifth Doctor in The Kingmaker, yet claims here that it's her first visit to the city. Perhaps she meant her first visit in the modern day.

This Reminds Me...:

• The Doctor mentions Jaconda, the planet that they visited in season 21 finale The Twin Dilemma.
  
• The Doctor has called Peri by a number of his previous companions' names, including Susan, Jamie, Zoe and Tegan.
• The Doctor has also called her Zodin, the name of a villainess fought by the Second Doctor offscreen. She was mentioned in The Five Doctors.
• Lytton appeared as a Dalek agent in Resurrection of the Daleks.
• The TARDIS materialises in Foreman's Yard, first seen in An Unearthly Child. It will show up again in Remembrance of the Daleks.
• Cybermen were previously seen in the sewers of London in The Invasion.
• Mondas was destroyed in The Tenth Planet.
• Telos and its ice tombs were visited by the Second Doctor in The Tomb of the Cybermen.
• The Cybermen have a ship on the dark side of the Moon, just as they did in The Invasion.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: I will never stop singing the praises of Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor, but I was dreading watching this story again. All that I could remember was Lytton's hands, all the continuity (Foreman's Yard - why?) and the Doctor being unpleasant to the whiny and oddly-dressed Peri. I was very surprised to find that it's actually rather good and not nearly as unfocused as I remembered it being. Having fully stabilised, the Doctor is a defined man now and is so much easier to watch. This is helped by the gentle scenes he shares with the Cryons and that he becomes a prisoner of the Cybermen, meaning that we get to see him in a far different position than that of the ultimate authority that he was in The Twin Dilemma. The Cybermen are easily one of the weakest aspects of this story and the second episode is, despite the continuity, better than the first but this is still an okay story. Attack of the Cybermen comes close to a B, but ultimately earns itself a C.

Doctor Who (Season 22)

The Twin Dilemma (Season 21)  |  Attack of the Cybermen  |  Vengeance on Varos